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The fix was changing the chemistry of the water to control the corrosion, testing and treating the kids drinking the water, and ul- timately (at some expense) replacing most of the lead pipes. Journalists are certainly not the only ones who failed to learn


these lessons. The failures in Flint fall also at the feet of the oper- ators of the Flint drinking water plant, the Flint emergency man- ager, the state Department of Environmental Quality, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, the U.S. EPA regional office and the EPA na- tional office. A competent water plant operator would know enough to an- ticipate and correct for the problem. A competent regulator would admit the truth and ensure the fix happened. The law requires it. In fact, Miguel Del Toral, a Region 5 lead expert for EPA did try to warn EPA Regional Administrator Susan Hedman of the threat to public health in Flint. But Hedman effectively shut him up and warned that his report should not have reached the public [http://bit.ly/1ZQyDtI].


This is the kind of thing journalism is supposed to reveal. When it was exposed — and not simply by news media — Hedman had to resign. Flint offers once again to teach the lesson that it is wrong — sometimes disastrous — to prevent government employees like Del Toral from talking to journalists and the public. Right now that seems often to be the policy of EPA’s main


press office [http://j.mp/EPAPressPolicy] — seemingly out of the mistaken belief that if they keep message control tight enough they can prevent PR disasters. What deception and nondisclosure bought EPA instead, in this case, was an even bigger PR disaster. Here’s another lesson. If you understand the lead problem, you understand that it can be a problem in many water systems — es- pecially older water systems, which means systems in the East. And that means that there are lead stories — and untold lead stories — in many U.S. cities beyond Flint.


While the Flint debacle is egregious and deserves focus, the focus on it should not distract journalists from looking for similar stories [http://j.mp/SimilarStories] closer to home. Only a few news media [http://j.mp/BeyondFlint] have looked at this bigger picture.


One who did was SEJ board member Randy Lee Loftis in National Geographic [http://j.mp/LoftisBeyondFlint].


‘Outsider’ journalism does much of work on Flint


Another thing to notice about the good work Fonger and others did is that much of the most important stuff they got did not come directly from official sources, but from outsiders. Some of the credit for unearthing the story goes to their nongovernment sources. Among them was concerned mom Lee Anne Walters [http://j.mp/FlintWhistleBlower], who dogged the agencies relent- lessly for info because she wanted to protect her son, Garrett. And Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, who a decade earlier had helped break the cover-up [http://j.mp/ProfMarcEdwards] of D.C.’s lead problem.


There was also the brigade of Flint citizens who sampled water [http://j.mp/CitizenSamplers] to check government lead findings. And Mona Hanna-Attisha, a Flint pediatrician whose research re- vealed the spike [http://j.mp/MonaHannaAttisha] in lead poisoning among city children. And there was Del Toral, who was not supposed to talk to re- porters, but did [http://j.mp/FlintWhistleBlower]. (Lesson: your job is not done once you have talked to the agency spokesperson.) It was not only journalists such as the Flint Journal’s Fonger,


the Detroit Free Press’ Egan [http://on.freep.com/1o2japn] and The Guardian’s Ryan Felton, [http://bit.ly/1nCM8M7] who filed the Freedom of Information Act requests. Some of the most productive FOIA requests were filed by Edwards [http://bit.ly/1o2k8C0] and a non-traditional journalist named Curt Guyette (more on him in a moment).


That’s another thing: Some of the best journalism produced on the Flint story was done by non-traditional journalists in non- journalistic settings. A case in point is Guyette, who works for the Michigan ACLU and has the job title “investigative reporter.” (OK — we don’t usu- ally label someone working for an advocacy group a “reporter,” but that’s the point.)


Guyette, who spent a career working for alternative papers, was one of the few doing truly “old school” journalism. He was the one who requested Del Toral’s memo under FOIA. And then he published it: both the redacted version released by EPA and the unredacted version that leaked.


It was the kind of old-school journalism too rarely done by the traditional media covering this story and many others. EPA offi- cials, in FOIA’d memos, questioned Guyette’s objectivity. But the memos proved EPA’s deception and negligence. Guyette told Brooke Gladstone of “On The Media,” “I really don’t care what they think of me. When you have the documents, when you have the testimony, it really doesn’t matter what they think. … My main job is to provide information to the public.”


‘News is what people want to keep hidden’


A key figure in the Flint story has been pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, who compiled data that showed the number of children in Flint with elevated levels of lead in their blood had doubled.


Another lesson for journalists to note is how many lies had been told by how many people and agencies before the lid finally came off. Reporting legend I.F. Stone said it years ago: “All gov- ernments lie.” In Michigan, state officials insisted the water was safe, even


Photo: Katie Rausch / The Blade


when internal memos showed it wasn’t. They insisted it met stan- Continued on page 27


9 SEJournal Spring 2016


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